Promised Land

[23] It Was Fine, Now It's Less Fine :)

When Tommy and Tubbo learned that Ranboo had never celebrated Halloween, he had never been loaded into a car and driven to a store faster.

He knew what the holiday was; he knew it was the night before All Saints' Day, and he knew that the nuns would never let him participate in such a thing because of... Well, there's some sort of satanism aspect, a little bit of witchcraft, and they didn't trust the kids outside the orphanage if they couldn't see them (which meant being within ten feet of the building), so for Ranboo, the holiday never happened.

He had thought, while he was still in the orphanage, that he'd celebrate it one day. That when he aged out, when he was an adult, hopefully with friends, they'd invite him to a Halloween party, or something. Something like that.

But Ranboo was out earlier than he ever expected, and his friends were on a mission.

"We've got to do a group costume!" Tubbo says loudly.

They're standing in the middle of a costume store. It was one of those pop up, once-a-year stores that sell Halloween and only Halloween stuff that appears in closed-down buildings that once were a large store. Decorations and costumes line the shelves and hang up on cork boards, and Ranboo can't smell anything but plastic.

Tommy sticks out his tongue and blows a raspberry. "That's a kid's thing to do."

"I think we're still--" Ranboo gets cut off. Like usual. But it's not the bad kind of cut off; whenever Tommy or Tubbo interject, he never feels like he has to shy away. It's just something that happens.

"But Tommy, it's Ranboo's first Halloween." Tubbo grabs him by the arm (gently, Ranboo notices, whenever Tubbo grabs him it's always gentle and that's nice because Tubbo has quite the strength in him magically) and pulls him close in a side-hug. Which is a little awkward because of their height difference, but it's fine. "We need to do something together. As a family. "

Even though Tubbo isn't a part of the family legally, he basically is.

"...Fine. If you can find something that's cool , then, I guess I don't mind." Tommy says, crossing his arms. Tubbo nods fervorously, before bolting off to a corner of the store. Once he's out of sight, Tommy groans. "I hate it when he uses them big eyes on me."

Ranboo chuckles. "You let him."

"It's impossible to resist." Tommy runs his hands through his hair. They begin to walk in the direction Tubbo went off in, towards the more classic Halloween costumes. The Axe-Murderer, the Vampire, the Salt-and-Pepper shakers-- those costumes. "I don't know how you do it."

"There were a lot of younger kids at the orphanage." Ranboo says. He doesn't even think about it-- the words just roll off his tongue naturally. At Tommy's quirked eyebrow, he realizes that, well. He doesn't talk much about the orphanage with everyone, does he? "You, uh, you learn how to ignore it when you're the oldest there."

It still worked on him, sometimes, Ranboo remembers. Not much. But sometimes. It got better when he got older and learned to resist it easier.

"Was it bad there?"

"What?" The question came out of nowhere. Ranboo shakes his head, though he does feel a little-- hesitation? Guilt?-- as he does so. "No, it was fine. I mean, except for the dreamon stuff near the end there, but it was fine."

Was it? A taunting thought says, but he pushes it aside. It's stuff that, Ranboo would be only honest with himself, he would rather not think about. Because thinking about it meant remembering, and he knows--